Keep Your Eye On the Grand Flying Flag

I was looking up something online about Tim Walz and his time as governor of Minnesota and I found this interesting flag design that, I learned, is the new state flag of Minnesota.

What? How did that happen?

It's part of a new trend among some of the states where their flags are increasingly seen as boring to redesign them and make them look more like national flags.  Most state flags have the state seal on them and little diversity or variety in colors.  Kansas, Oklahoma and Oregon have their names in really big letters on their flags to make sure that everyone Gets It.  The new Minnesota state flag, which replaced one of those old boring single-color flags with the state seal on it, shows a dark blue field representing the night skies, a light blue field representing the state's abundant waters, and an eight-pointed star representing the North Star.  

The Minnesota state flag, adopted in May 2024, was adopted two months after Utah got rid of its boring flag with the state seal against a single-color backdrop, showing a beehive in the middle of the flag to represent industry and to allude to the Mormon homeland's original proposed name, Deseret, which Brigham Young insisted was a word used by the ancient Israelite peoples of the Americas to mean, "honeybee," the bee being a symbol in Mormonism of hard work.  This is why Utah is officially nicknamed "The Beehive State" and its state motto is "Industry."  

Thus the state flags of Minnesota and Utah join interesting flags from other states, like Alaska . . . 

. . . Arizona . . .

. . . and, of course, Ohio.

And of course, I can't forget the flag of Tennessee . . .

. . . or the flag of Texas . . . 

. . . which I sometimes confuse with the national flag of Chile.

And, in keeping with the trend of new state flags, I understand that Florida may have a new flag soon.

Yes,  I went there. 

Girl Of the North Country

Who can turn the whole world on with her smile?

Maybe it's Amy Klobuchar, and if it is, maybe someone knows it.  And, if it is, she should know it.

As of now, the senior senator from Minnesota has a good chance to be the first female President because, first of all, she's a woman, and second of all, she's from the Upper Midwest.  She's a nice lady, and she comes across as a political Mary Richards the same way Minneapolis anchorman Rod Grams - who served one term (1995-2001) in the U.S. Senate seat Klobuchar currently holds - reminded voters of Ted Baxter.  (I'm not making that up; Grams, a conservative Republican, was a total idiot.)  Simply put, she embodies Midwestern nice.

So far, that's her biggest advantage.  On the issues, also comes across as Midwestern bland.  She supports universal health care but doesn't want to completely endorse Medicare for all, and she supports doing something about climate change but only tacitly acknowledge the Green New Deal, calling it "aspirational."  (The Green New Deal as proposed has since shown some flaws and cracks in its basic structure, and despite support for its goals, support for the program per se is soft.)  She's basically a boilerplate Democrat.

In general, I find Klobuchar to be dull but inoffensive, and when you consider the fact that Donald Trump is neither of those things, that could be an asset.  Her only pitfall is her apparent reputation for being a horrible boss to work with; her alleged penchant for running roughshod over her staff suggests that may be less like Mary Richards and more like Miranda Priestley.  But, yeah, sure, I'd vote for her.  I darn her with faint praise, yes, but as always, I haven't found anyone I can get behind unreservedly.  I didn't expect Klobuchar to be the one any more than I expected Beto O'Rourke to be - I'm still underwhelmed by him, though not as much as I'm underwhelmed by John Delaney.  As for Klobuchar, who knows?  She may make it after all.

And she sure knows how to handle the snow.              

Day of Decision

Well, today's the big day in Alabama, and I honestly don't know who is going to win the special Senate election.  But the Republicans will have many headaches in the near - and far - future if Roy Moore wins.

As for Al Franken . . . what happens in Alabama may have an impact on what happens in Minnesota.  For now, Franken's Senate seat is safely in Democratic hands, and Mark Dayton, the Democratic governor, will appoint a Democratic caretaker senator in Franken's place until a special election is held.  But Republicans have gained so much support in mainly Democratic Minnesota over the years, and they've been so competitive in recent statewide elections, that a special Senate election isn't a gimme for the Democrats. Although the state has not been carried by a Republican presidential candidate since 1972,  Republicans have done very well in Senate elections.  In 1976, the state was represented by two liberal icons in the Senate, Hubert Humphrey and Walter Mondale; a little over two years later, with Humphrey dead and Mondale as Vice President (you will note that I did not take the obvious easy shot), both of Minnesota's senators were Republicans.  More recently, Franken won a close 2008 race for his seat against incumbent Republican Senator Norm Coleman that wasn't called for months.  And by the way, Hillary Clinton only won the state in the 2016 presidential election by 1.5 percentage points.

Michael Smerconish of CNN has suggested - not reported, only suggested - that Franken could rescind his resignation if Moore wins today's election in Alabama.  But Franken could also choose to run in a special election to clear his name and let the voters ultimately decide whether he should go back to the Senate.  I don't know of any precedent for such a ploy in the modern era, but in 1881, when U.S. Senators were elected by state legislatures,  Republican senators Roscoe Conkling and Thomas Platt of New York resigned their seats to protest President James Garfield's civil service reform policy and offered themselves as candidates in the special election for the very seats they vacated, hoping for a win to demonstrate their political power.  Just one word of warning to Franken - Conkling's and Platt's strategy failed.  They were conservatives at a time when the New York state legislature was dominated by moderate Republicans, and so the two ex-senators were not re-elected.

As for Doug Jones, the Democrat opposing Roy Moore in Alabama and a former federal prosecutor, don't count him out.  He has been very competitive, he has a reputation for fairness and justice, and he is revered by black voters in Alabama for successfully prosecuting the perpetrators of the 1963 Birmingham church bombing as U.S. Attorney in northern Alabama.  He also was instrumental in coordinating  state and federal resources against Centennial Olympic Park bomber Eric Rudolph for another bombing in  Birmingham - an abortion clinic in 1997.  Jones also advocated that Rudolph be tried first in Alabama for the clinic bombing before his trial in for the Olympic park bombing in Georgia.  If Jones loses, it won't be for lack of trying.  But even some conservatives, like radio host Hugh Hewitt, think he's going to win.

Fasten your seat belts, it's going to be bumpy night . . ..

Much Ado About Nothing

Rick Santorum - also known by his Lakota name, "Sleeps With Dead Babies" - is the man of the hour in the Republican presidential nomination contest, having swept the caucuses in Colorado and Minnesota and won a primary in Missouri, a state considered a microcosm of America at large. He's shaken up the Republican race by winning 28 convention delegates for a total of 45 so far, putting him ahead of Newt Gingrich and damaging Mitt Romney's aura of inevitability as the Republican nominee. Gingrich has to find a way to keep his campaign going in the month leading up to Super Tuesday on March 6, when many Southern states with voters friendly to his proposals are holding primaries and caucuses, while Romney has to avoid freaking out.

But wait a minute! Isn't the focus on this Santorum sweep just a lot of hype from a mainstream media eager to keep the GOP race alive? I think so. As someone who wants to see those Grand Old Partisans go down this autumn, I hope this does keep the race alive. But how can it be anything other than hype when the caucuses in Minnesota and Colorado are in fact the first step in a complicated process to award delegates to the Republican convention, and the delegates Santorum won last night are not bound by the caucus results? And shouldn't it matter that Missouri didn't matter? Missouri's primary was nonbinding; the state Republican party chooses its convention delegates through a series of caucuses and state conventions starting next month. Why have a primary that doesn't count? And why should Santorum brag about winning it? This would be like Jon Cryer bragging about winning a best TV actor poll on Facebook - or, for that matter, a People's Choice award.

Holding nonbinding primaries is a useless gesture, it wastes taxpayers' money, and it gives Chris Matthews way too much to talk about. Besides, we already have political contests in this country that don't count. They're called general elections. :-p

More Primary Concerns

A slew of primary elections held yesterday produced mixed results.

In Colorado, progressives were dealt another setback when their preferred candidate Andrew Romanoff lost his Senate bid to incumbent appointed junior senator Michael Bennet, who got the support of the White House. Romanoff pushed a decisively liberal agenda, and he even had the support of former President Bill Clinton, but the former Colorado House speaker couldn't overcome Bennet in yesterday's voting. President Obama was able to claim a victory, but progressives who wanted to push a more bold Democratic agenda were hit with a Rocky Mountain low. Unlike Blanche Lincoln in Arkansas, Bennet will probably prevail with the Democratic base, if only because he has a staunchly conservative opponent in the general election - Republican Ken Buck, who claims not to be a member of the Tea Party movement but is a favorite of the TP crowd. It's hard to tell whether Bennet can win outright. The gubernatorial contest pits Republican Dan Maes agianst popular Denver mayor John Hickenlooper, with ex-Republican congressman and noted immigrant basher Tom Tancredo running as a third-party candidate and possibly splitting the Republican vote.

Meanwhile, in Connecticut, wrestling mogul Linda McMahon cruised to victory in a Senate primary necessitated by an inconclusive spring state Republican convention. Spending her way past once-favored GOP candidate Rob Simmons, she now plans to spend $50 million against the Democratic nominee, Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal. As it became apparent before the votes were counted that McMahon was going to be the nominee, the press began to take note of her record of peddling violence and sadism to children, and it won't be long before they start looking at the abuse of steroids in her "sport" that led to murder and suicide in the Benoit family case mentioned earlier on this blog. People are afraid of McMahon's deep pockets, but Blumenthal has the brand name and the record of service; his opponent's strategy is to drive up her poll numbers with her financial numbers and hope he slips up. But Blumenthal already did slip up, with poorly chosen words on his Vietnam War-era service that were blown out of proportion and lowered his ratings in the polls only temporarily. I can't imagine McMahon getting that lucky again.

I'll have more on McMahon later. For the Republican gubernatorial nomination in Connecticut, where Republican governor Jodi Rell is retiring, Tom Foley was nominated to run in November. Ned Lamont, who won the Democratic senate nomination in 2006 but lost the general election to Joseph Lieberman, couldn't even get the Democratic nomination for governor this time, losing to former Stanford mayor Dan Malloy. In Minnesota, where Governor Tim Pawlenty is retiring, Mark Dayton, a department store scion (the Minneapolis-based Dayton's chain was taken over by Federated Stores and given the corporate Macy's name) and one-term U.S. senator who was practically asked to leave Washington, narrowly won the Democratic nomination for governor; conservative state representative Tom Emmer won the Republican nomination, the easy winner of the GOP line on the ballot. Neither Connecticut nor Minnesota, so-called blue states, have elected a Democratic governor since 1986.

Now it's onto Georgia, where former governor Roy Barnes won the Democratic nomination for his old office, with the results for the Republican gubernatorial nomination still too close to call between former Georgia secretary of state Karen Handel and former U.S. Representative (and former Democrat) Nathan Deal. While other states may not like incumbent officeholders, the trend in Georgia seems to be in favor of former officeholders.

In The News - June 30, 2009

Al Franken finally got certified to take his seat in the United States Senate when the Minnesota State Supreme Court voted unanimously to recognize his election victory by 312 votes. For once, Norm Coleman knew when to quit, and he graciously conceded. Now Democrats are under pressure to deliver with a 60-seat filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, but on major legislative items like health care, where there's a bipartisan impetus to get something done, that shouldn't be a problem.

Sonia Sotomayor's bid to take a seat on the Supreme Court suddenly got easier as well, for not only are the Republicans unable to stop her with a filibuster, Franken will sit on the Senate Judiciary Committee - here, during the Sotomayor hearings, more comedy will be provided by Jeff Sessions than by Franken.

Meanwhile, acting on George Walker Bush's timetable, President Obama had the military hand over control of Baghdad and other Iraqi cities to the Iraqi army. U.S. troops will for now remain in the areas outside the cities but still get involved on the Baghdad and other urban areas in case of further trouble.

Typical of Americans to move to the suburbs and ignore the cities except for their own interests.

A Political Riddle

Here's a riddle for you all.

What's the difference between Al Gore and Norm Coleman?

Al Gore knew when to give up, and he actually won his election!

Even today, Al Gore has a better chance of becoming President than Norm Coleman has of returning to the Senate. :-p

Burris In the Saddle

Why does the continuing saga of Roland Burris feel less like a Shakespearean tragedy than a second-rate Second City (double word usage not intended) repertory skit?

Burris, the newly appointed Democratic senator from Illinois, testified last month that he had no contacts with ousted Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich. Now it turns out that Burris in fact talked with Robert Blagojevich, the governor's brother, about fundraising for the governor, but he said he never did anything of the sort. Then it turned out he tried to do fundraisers for Blagojevich but couldn't get any started.

Would we even be having this conversation if Blagojevich hadn't played the race card by making this appointment? Burris's enormous ego has been clashing with his utter cluelessness of late, embarrassing a state that thought it had put this latest wave of corruption behind it. I've concluded that Burris himself is innocent of wrongdoing, but his ability to get so thoroughly mixed up in the Blagojevich clan's sliminess makes him seem like a bewildered fool who doesn't know what he's doing.

The irony here is that Illinois almost seemed doomed to be deprived a senator due to scandal, then they ended up with this joker. Meanwhile, in Minnesota, where elections are run more cleanly than just about anywhere else, Al Franken - an intentionally funny guy - can't get seated because of an ongoing recount made possible by that same sense of ethics.

Al Franken wrote for "Saturday Night Live" and worked with Second City alumni. And even he couldn't have written a sketch like the one unfolding in Illinois.